


Damned Are We Among Women

by Poetry



Series: Dæmorphing [22]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Dark, Gen, Political Intrigue, Scheming, Sharing a Body, Yeerks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 18:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18452270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: Eva and Aftran are not friends, but they share a foxhole.





	Damned Are We Among Women

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joysweeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/gifts).



> Written for Joysweeper, who generously donated to RAICES, Border Angels, and The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. If you enjoy this fic, consider donating to them as well.
> 
> Thanks to my beta reading champions, litluminary and LilacSolanum, as always.
> 
> Attributions for the banner: the Courier Prime font is by Alan Dague-Greene, and the prayer icon is by [Cristiano Zoucas](https://thenounproject.com/cristiano.zoucas/).
> 
> If you're not familiar with the Hail Mary prayer from Catholicism, you may find it helpful to read the English text, as it is a core theme in the fic:  
> Hail Mary, full of grace,  
> the Lord is with thee.  
> Blessed art thou among women,  
> and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.  
> Holy Mary, Mother of God,  
> pray for us sinners,  
> now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

**I.**

_Set immediately after The Bright Clear Line_

  


_Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Though obviously not with me right now._

The Pool was unlike any I had known.

_Damned am I among women, and damned is the fruit of my womb, Marco._

I had heard rumors that all Vissers and Sub-Vissers on the Pool Ship had access to a special Pool of their own, and that Visser One always fed in this exclusive Pool. But it was another thing to see it in person. It was so _small_ , with just one pier, a few reinforced cages, and a small sleek lounge area for voluntary hosts. The Pool looked better cleaned, but there was no way to be sure until I was in it.

_Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us, the utterly fucked, now and at the hour of our death, which might be in about five minutes. Amen._

Two doughty Blue Bands stood ready on the pier. Ahead of me, Sub-Visser Twenty-Nine knelt at the end of the pier and ducked her long snake neck into the Pool. I stared down at the roiling brown sludge. I was very hungry.

_Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee._

«Would you _SHUT UP_?!» I roared.

«You are about two minutes away from possibly royally fucking up our entire insane gambit,» Eva snapped. «We make it or break it based on your ability to pretend to be a Yeerk you met two days ago. So _forgive me_ if I feel like a little prayer might be helpful right now.»

Sub-Visser Twenty-Nine’s host body went slack on the pier. A long-term host, one infested right out of childhood, no doubt, passive and dull-eyed without her Yeerk. The Blue Bands picked her up and dragged her to a cage. My turn.

«Your prayer is distracting nonsense! What is the point? What does it get you?» I fell to my knees at the end of the pier, held onto the edge, and crouched forward.

«Can’t you feel it?» Eva said. And I could: a sense of vast warmth, like the universe itself knew me and cared about me.

I recoiled from it. «That has no reality outside your mind.»

Eva _shoved_ a memory at me, clear and savagely bright: a thousand candles in a dim church, voices raised in a hymn, while a winter wind howled outside the walls. «Yes, it _does_. Now _go._ Remember what I told you. Go!» It felt as if she shoved me out of her brain, then, even though of course she couldn’t. But I followed the sensation all the same, and fell out of her into the Pool.

In the moment of turbulence as I hit the Pool sludge, I morphed, knowing Sub-Visser Twenty-Nine would be waiting for me. It was strange, to become Edriss 562; there was something more reserved about her feel-fields, something instinctively quiet and inward-turned. I was so hungry that there was only a brief moment of relief before the morphing sapped at my energy. But there was no time for exhaustion.

“I am glad to see you well, Visser One,” Sub-Visser Twenty-Nine said. “We thought for certain you were lost. Your network of allies is impressive.”

What had Eva said about her?

_Sub-Visser Twenty-Nine is a squirrelly little fucker who’s hedging her bets against every possibility she can think of. She’ll feel you out to figure out whether you’re still the safest bet in the Empire. Convince her that you are. I’d rather have a self-interested coward in her position than a bold visionary._

“Being the first to land on Earth has its advantages,” I said. “The Council of Thirteen will recognize that value soon enough.”

“Surely you could persuade those strategic allies into other projects,” Sub-Visser Twenty-Nine said. She called out to a passing Yeerk. “Sub-Visser 201! Tell Visser One about the new project in your department.”

Sub-Visser 201 halted in her rapid swim. Another two Yeerks stopped to listen. “Of course I would be pleased to explain. I’m in command of training for new Hork-Bajir-Controllers, and I think the training needs some innovation. First I want to start with younger hosts…”

A wave of despair washed over me. The Pool was supposed to be a place of rest and communion, where I could feed and spend time with other Yeerks without the pressures of duty. But my subordinates would give me no rest here, and I had no peers I could open up to.

“What do you think, Visser?”

I didn’t even have Eva’s sharp mind to guide me. As much as she resented me, wished me gone every moment, without her these highest echelons of the Yeerk Empire were as hostile and surrounding as dry air and darkness.

“I think you will try your new methods,” I said, “and I will judge them on their merits. Now I have some private research to do on the intranet, so if you could go and use the _proper_ channels for debriefing me…”

“Your assistant always schedules me on esh-rane when I need to feed,” complained a low-ranking Sub-Visser.

“Change your feeding schedule, then,” I huffed, and swam as fast as I could to a terminal. Blessed relief. With my face and palps engaged to the terminal, it wouldn’t be so noticeable when I demorphed. My connection to the intranet broke during the demorph, then re-formed. I entered the password the real Visser One had told me and basked in the Kandrona. I pulled up random data files to keep up appearances, but I didn’t know what I would even do with Visser One’s intranet account. Doubtless Eva could think of something useful for next time, but I was far beyond all of that. Kandrona, Kandrona, a moment’s peace.

The terminal stirred me from my reverie. _Feeding time concluded, Edriss 562. Return to your host._

I swam back to the pier quickly, before another filshig Sub-Visser could ambush me. I reached out with my sonar and found Eva’s ear, not yet familiar, though it soon would be. Eva did not surrender her breath and her thought to me the way Cassie does, but made me wrest control, an illusion of resistance she gave herself. I was on the pier, now, in Eva’s tiny birdlike body and Mercurio’s solid presence. I brought Eva upright.

«What did you learn?» Eva said.

«Um,» I said. «Was I supposed to learn something?»

Eva shoved memories at me again, sharp-edged in their detail: talking to the Hork-Bajir in the cage with her in a mix of their language, Galard, and English. She had learned where Sub-Visser 201 had been training from her host, what the sub-vissers complained about when Visser One wasn’t watching. And I had learned…

«I’m sorry,» I said. «I just – » I almost opened up my emotions, then, so Eva could feel how confused and desperate I had been. But I couldn’t imagine she would have much sympathy, having spent her last two hours locked in a cage. So I kept myself to myself, and resolved to do better by her next time.

  


**II.**

_Set between The Bright Clear Line and Ch. 2 of The Guided and the Lost_

  


The door to my quarters chimed, and I rose to answer it. As expected, my personal aide, Sardrith 427, was there with a pill bottle proffered in xyr front claws.

“Thank you, Sardrith,” I said, taking the bottle. “The budget report is due to the Council of Thirteen in – “ I glanced at the clock on my holo-screen. “Ten hours, and my host body is reaching its limits.”

Sardrith hissed, and the translation collar around the base of xyr head said in precise Galard, “I will have the data from Medical compiled for you within the hour.”

“See it done,” Aftran said. “Kandrona shine and strengthen you.”

The door slid closed, and I sat back down at my terminal, figures and charts swimming before my eyes. Aftran and I had been switching control of my body back and forth for hours, but exhaustion was truly setting in. Mercurio pecked me hard in the thigh, making me yelp. “Take your damn caffeine pill.”

I dry-swallowed a caffeine pill from the bottle. “My turn with the body,” I muttered, but I found it even harder to concentrate on the screen than before. My head hurt so bad. Where were my hands anyway?

«Eva!» a voice bellowed inside my brain. «You’ve been poisoned! You have to morph!»

“Morph?” I said. “How?” I was sliding out of my chair. I slumped onto Mercurio for support.

«Sorry, Eva,» Aftran said, «but this is a fast-acting poison. I don’t have a choice.»

I could barely follow what happened next. My body roiled and writhed, beyond my control. I think I screamed. Mercurio disappeared, and I collapsed to the ground. Then my thinking started to clear. I felt a tail burst out of my spine, and I was fully in the battle morph I’d acquired at the Gardens: a spotted hyena.

«Son of a _bitch_! Someone poisoned my caffeine pills!» And it would have killed me for sure if it weren’t for the morphing power and Aftran there to help me use it. Would have killed Aftran, too, since probably nobody would have come around to my quarters in time to rescue her from my corpse.

«Was it Sardrith?» Aftran said. «Who has it out for Visser One?»

«Lots of people,» I said grimly. I sniffed the open pill bottle and recoiled. «Augh! This smells awful! Human noses are _useless_.»

«Wait a minute,» Mercurio said. «How good a sense of smell do Taxxons have?»

«Incredibly good,» Aftran said. «The Empire uses Taxxons like humans use bloodhounds.»

«Sardrith would have to be in on it, then,» I said, already demorphing. My body returned to me, poison-free. «There’s no way xe wouldn’t have smelled that. Xe’s brought me caffeine pills before, xe has to know what they’re supposed to smell like.» My suit was in shreds on the floor from the morph to hyena. I retrieved my Dracon beam from the pocket and fed it down the garbage chute.

«Sardrith’s office is next to Meeting Room One,» Aftran said. «We should call some Hork-Bajir-Controllers for backup.»

«No!» I said. «We don’t know who’s in on it. I have to go talk to Sardrith alone.» I hefted the Dracon beam. «Don’t worry about me. This should do for xyr.»

«You still need backup,» Aftran insisted. «Let me come with you in fly morph. Just so you have an extra pair of eyes.»

«Yes, yes, go ahead,» I said impatiently. «Let’s hurry up, I still have to file that budget report with the Council of Thirteen in ten hours.»

«How can you still be thinking about that?» Aftran demanded as she broke the last ties with my brain.

I put her down on my chair so she could morph and put on a fresh suit – even with Yeerks as distant from human mores as they were, it still wouldn’t do for me to run around the Pool Ship naked. “You ready?” I said.

Somewhere in my room, a fly buzzed. «Ready.»

I stalked out my room toward Sardrith’s office, my hand around the Dracon beam in my pocket. Everyone active on the Pool Ship instinctively got out of my way. I swept into xyr office and didn’t bother to close the door behind me. I spun xyr chair away from xyr holo-screen and hissed, “Who put you up to this?”

Sardrith’s red jelly eyes wobbled. Xe hissed, followed by the translation: “Put me up to what, Visser?”

“Do you think no one’s ever tried to poison me before?” I blustered. Plenty _had_ tried before, but Edriss had always prevented them before they could harm me. Without her, I was letting my guard slip. Careless. “You think I don’t have my methods to stop assassination attempts? Tell me!”

Then Sardrith did something I didn’t expect: xe shrieked and launched xyrself at me, mouth first. I shouted and whipped my Dracon beam out of my pocket. I staggered backward under Sardrith’s weight, but still got in my shot. I smelled burning Taxxon flesh, and blood gushed onto me. Another suit for the garbage chute.

I heard a cry from outside. “Visser! Hang on! I’m coming!” A Hork-Bajir-Controller I recognized as a guard from the Pool burst in through the open door.

«Shoot him!» a voice cried out in my mind. Aftran! She was in here somewhere. «I’ve been following him, he conspired with Sardrith, _shoot_!»

I fired at the guard, straight in the chest, maximum setting. He crumpled to the ground. I heard thundering steps. More were coming. We’d made a commotion. Ship security would sort out the mess.

“That’s the second time you’ve saved my life,” I said, giddy with exhaustion. “Fuck. I still haven’t had any goddamn caffeine. And that budget report is due in, what, nine and a half hours?”

«We’ll pick up some clean ones on the way back to work. Double-check in hyena morph with the door closed,» Aftran said.

“Good,” I said, eyes closed, slumping back against the wall, Taxxon blood dripping all down my front. “And then it’ll be your turn with the body.”

  


**III.**

_Set immediately after The Tree of Life_

__  


We sat side by side at Visser One’s private desk, Eva in her sleeping clothes, me in morph as her, wrapped in a blanket. Mercurio was in the bathroom, relaxing under a gentle flow of cold water, the shower audible through the open door. Papers were spread out before us. Eva bent over one, scribbling away. I stared down at the pen in my hand.

Eva had insisted on establishing this routine, early on. _Involuntary Controllers never get any time to relax and be themselves, outside of the cage every three days. With you, I don’t have to live that way. And neither do you. Both of us need time to just be us, or we’ll go insane._

I wasn’t quite me, but there was no way to just be myself outside a Pool. But I had to admit it was good to be alone with my thoughts for a while, without all the pressure of the Pool, trying desperately to feed as myself and meet the demands of Visser One’s toadies at the same time. It looked a little strange, the regular requisition of primitive office supplies, but we just told administration that sometimes we needed to sketch out our thoughts by hand.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Bachu had told us. The free Pool was named after me, and it was sick. We all were. I tried to imagine what it must have looked like, in Tobias’s eyes. I’d had a Hork-Bajir host. I knew what their sight was like, even if I hadn’t known what it meant at the time. I set my pen to paper.

Eva is no artist, and the only human host besides her I’ve had for any length of time was a child. I drew a circle for the Pool, a thicket of scribbles for the sludge, and jagged white fragments for the sick, broken _hrala_ of the Yeerks in it. It all made so much sense now. That feeling I’d had in the city of the Yoort, with its endless pipelines and tanks and gardens of Pool-water, like I’d been feeding under a veiled Kandrona all my life, and the veil had suddenly been ripped away. I’d thought it was just because the Yoort formulated their water with the right balance of nutrients, not like the thick sludge we spacefaring Yeerks made do with. But it had been so much more than that. There must have been a vast network of _hrala_ in those pipes, in the sea-gardens with their sonic installations, connecting Yoort to Yoort to Isk to Yoort again. I had been starving all my life, and for a brief time, had known spiritual sustenance. Like Cassie had with Quincy, like Eva had with Mercurio.

Who emerged now from the bathroom, trailing water in his footsteps. He peered over the table at my drawing. “It looks like you broke a glass into a black hole.”

“Something like that.” I looked over at Eva’s drawing: a giant Mercurio, with a sail on his back, as if he were a boat, a stick figure by the sail with flowing black hair that must have been her. In the background, Eva drew a pattern of islands she must know from memory from the Santa Barbara Harbor. On a fresh sheet of paper, I sketched Cassie’s head in profile with Quincy flying over it. Inside her head, I drew a miniature sun.

“You miss her,” Mercurio observed, looking at my paper.

Sudden anger tightened my throat and burned at my eyes. Human anger was so visceral and sickening. How could Mercurio reduce something so vast and aching to such a banal little observation? “You heard what Bachu said,” I bit out. “About Yeerks’ anchors. What our – dæmons are.”

“The Pool,” Mercurio said. “Each other.”

“Tobias said we’re sick,” I said. “You think I’m getting _hrala_ from _that_ Pool? The place where I half-starve to death while sub-Vissers narc on each other to me for half a chance at a promotion?”

“It isn’t fair,” Mercurio said. “I know that. Where are you going with this?”

“Tobias also said we can get it from hosts,” I said. “And I just – do you think I could be getting some from you?”

Eva looked up from her paper and set her pen down. “I’m not Cassie, Aftran. I am not your friend.”

“Cassie _isn’t_ my _friend_ ,” I said, crumpling my drawing of her in my hand. “That’s not what I’m asking. Is Mercurio your _friend_?”

“Mercurio is my lifeblood,” Eva said, throwing an arm around him. The sleeve of her nightshirt went damp.

“Well, if Tobias is right, then maybe you’re mine,” I said. When her mouth twisted in a snarl, I burst out, “Do you think I _like_ that? Being so dependent on you? My survival is already in your hands, maybe even the fate of this entire war, do you think I want to add my _soul_ in the bargain? It’s too much, you’re already responsible for far too much!”

Eva deflated, all the outrage draining out of her. She was very small, without it. Gently she rested her fingertips on the crown of Mercurio’s head. “You’re right. I won’t hold myself responsible for your _hrala_. What am I, a saint, to hold that much? No. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. That all you get is me.”

“It’s better than what most Yeerks get,” I said. “A partner. A comrade-in-arms. A protector. Not just a sack of meat to move around.”

An alarm went off from the terminal. The evening sanity-saving routine was over. It was time to destroy the evidence. Eva gathered our drawings into a neat stack. I watched her feed them to the garbage chute as I demorphed.

  


**IV.**

_Set between Destroyer of Worlds and Stay Alive_

  


I had seen it in my schedule two rane ago. It wasn’t a surprise. But the sight of Cassie’s mother waiting for me in Meeting Room Three still hit me like a splash of icy water, trickling cold down my back.

For once in my life, I wished Aftran were with me. I could have used her, my poker face, my crutch, to cover my reactions. But it was convenient right now to be in two places at once, so I was here, and Aftran was in morph in our quarters, writing a report for the Guardians of the Galaxy. I found the steel in my spine and held out my hand. “Sub-Visser 198.”

Sub-Visser 198 shook my hand and smiled, just a little. “Edriss 562.”

“If you think I show favoritism toward my spawn-siblings,” I snapped, “you are about to be gravely disappointed. You will address me as Visser One.”

“Forgive me, Visser One,” Edriss 907 said, a hint of a smile still playing around her eyes. “It’s only that I haven’t met another Edriss in a long time. Most of us were sent off to Leera, and – well.”

I gave her a hard stare. A reminder of one of Visser One’s failures? Did this Edriss understand the thin ice she walked on? This was a dangerous game for a Peace Movement Yeerk to play, and of course she had no idea she was talking to a fellow Peace Movement spy.

“So much regret and concern for our spawn-siblings,” I sneered, taking a seat at the head of the table. “I’ll be sure to bring up your conscientiousness next time I meet with Edriss 671.” Who was in charge of feeding time assignments at the Grash Akdap Pool – not a Yeerk anyone wanted to cross, as they could put one at the bleeding edge of starvation with a keystroke.

“I’ll get to the point, Visser One,” Sub-Visser 198 said, taking the seat at my right. “The hospital program has been a great success. We have several more wards volunteering to be new hosts. I’m requesting an increase in funding to the program.”

Of course I wanted an increase in funding to the program. The Campsite Rule was doing part of my covert propaganda work for me. But I couldn’t acquiesce easily, or my mask might start to slip, and I couldn’t afford for that to happen even in front of an erstwhile ally. Sub-Visser 198 could be found out, Michelle re-infested, and I was the greatest secret weapon the Guardians of the Galaxy had. Well, second greatest weapon now, after Estrid-Corrill-Darrath.

I leaned forward, and Mercurio loomed with his beak perilously close to Dashiell’s perch on the arm of Michelle’s office chair. “What is your endgame with this, Sub-Visser 198? What do you hope to achieve? We’re no longer so pressed for hosts as we were. We’ve taken over the leadership of the California prison system. We can put troublesome Yeerks there. What is the benefit of _your_ program?”

Sub-Visser 198 inhaled and exhaled deeply. It looked like she’d prepared for this. Good. “Research and development, Visser. I know you’ve seen the medical improvements the Yeerks in the program have effected in their hosts.”

“Saving host bodies and costs for the medical division,” I finished. “Have you made projections? Show me your budget.”

She had all the technical reports in order, thank God. My funding decisions would hold up to Council scrutiny with these to back them up, even with money running tighter these days. “We can’t get them new medical equipment,” I said. “They’ll have to make do with whatever the hospital already has. But I can pay for another portable Kandrona so you can expand the scope of the operation.”

“Thank you, Visser,” Sub-Visser 198 said, inclining her head. “If I may be so bold, I heard a rumor you were esh-rane, and I’m due for a feeding during my stay on the Pool Ship. May I join you in the restricted-access Pool?”

My heart beat in my throat. It was all I could do not to reach for Mercurio. “By all means,” I said through numb lips. “I will respond to some urgent messages at my terminal and meet you at the Pool presently. Tell the guards you have my authorization.”

I swept back to my quarters as quickly as Mercurio’s legs would allow. Inside, Aftran was at our terminal, in morph as me, flicking through her report on the holo-screen. She was naked except for a towel draped over her shoulders for a little warmth in the recirculated air. Without Mercurio, she was like a sad dead husk of me, acting out the things I had done in life. Behind the safety of the closed door, I knelt down and embraced Mercurio. Aftran turned from the screen and examined me, the side of my face lit blue-green by the holographic glow.

“Sub-Visser 198 wants to feed with Visser One,” I said into the back of Mercurio’s neck.

“You agreed,” Aftran said. She was well-practiced by now at making my face impossible to read. “That will be a delicate balancing act. She doesn’t know about me.”

“You can keep other Yeerks from finding her out,” I said. “You can let slip things the Peace Movement needs to know. Try to work in the extent of the new military and law enforcement infiltration.”

“I can do that,” Aftran said. “I’ve learned. But what about you?”

“What _about_ me?” Mercurio snapped, shielding my face from her with a wing.

“You’ll be in a cage with Michelle,” Aftran said. “She doesn’t know what Cassie’s done.”

I laughed bitterly into Mercurio’s smooth neck. “She doesn’t know what? That her daughter’s a child soldier?”

“That Cassie is planning a genocide,” Aftran said.

“It’s not a deadly virus.”

“The difference is academic. Yeerks as we know them will not exist after this virus is released.”

I lifted my head. “I didn’t hear you argue these details with Cassie.”

“Of course I didn’t,” Aftran snapped. “She’s the last person who needs to hear them.”

In the circle of my arms, I felt Mercurio tilt his head. He said, “This is hard for you, isn’t it? You hid it from me, but I know anger on my own face.”

“I hate that she’s right,”Aftran said, drawing the towel close around her. “I hate that this is the best way, and she’s the one who thought of it, and it’s all in the hands of an Andalite zealot.”

I leaned against Mercurio and sighed. “Michelle just needs a friend right now. So do I. I think I can manage it.”

“I need a friend too,” Aftran said.

“Well, you don’t get one,” I snapped. “But you do get to perform your basic bodily functions in some amount of privacy. So I guess we all get some pros and cons around here.”

“Let’s go,” Aftran said, and demorphed.

I looked away. I don’t get to spare myself much. I have my face shoved into the most heinous shit, every day, but this is one disgusting thing I don’t have to watch with both eyes open. I kissed Mercurio’s beak and tried to tune out the sound of my own organs liquefying. When it was over, I scooped Aftran off my chair and pressed her to my ear.

  


Michelle was already in the cage when we arrived at the restricted-access Pool. She was trying to talk to Caio, Visser 112’s host. I wished her good luck. All Caio ever wants to do while Visser 112 feeds is sing Brazilian nursery rhymes to his jumping spider dæmon and stare into space. I could feel Aftran’s focus radiating off her. She would do what needed to be done with the Sub-Visser. _Good luck,_ I thought to her as she swam free of my ear.

The guard took me to the cage without any fuss; I don’t put on a show of screaming and struggling, these days. When the door locked shut, Michelle ran to me and threw her arms around me. Her tears were hot on the shoulder of my jacket. Dashiell pressed himself into the downy-soft feathers just above Mercurio’s feet.

I sank slowly to the floor, holding onto Michelle. I let myself really see her, the way I hadn’t let myself in the conference room, because it hadn’t really been her. Her dæmon was adorable, like a mouse but softer and rounder. She had a tan line from a wedding ring on her finger, but her Yeerk didn’t bother to wear it. There was gray starting to come in at her temples.

“Do you,” Michelle gasped between sobs. “Do you know how they – you’re Visser One’s host, you have to know – ”

There was so much I wanted to tell her. How to live with the things your child has been forced to do, how to embrace the too-young soldier they’ve become. But as far as anyone in the Empire knew, Visser One hadn’t seen or heard from Marco in the five years since she faked my death. Mercurio whispered to Dashiell, “They’re alive. They’re still fighting, every day. They’re deep in hiding. I don’t know where they are. That’s a good thing.”

It was even the truth. I don’t know where the Hork-Bajir valley is, beyond what everyone in the Visserarchy knows, that it’s almost certainly somewhere in Los Padres National Forest.

“When will it _end_?” Michelle ground out. “I can live with it, whatever happens, even if it kills me, but how long do I _have to_?”

“Not long,” I said, petting her braids. “One way or another, it won’t be long. They took me seven years ago. You can make it just a little longer.”

“Seven years?” Dashiell unburied his head from Mercurio’s feathers. “Seven years, and you’re the one comforting me. Come on.” He climbed up Mercurio’s front with his little claws, until he could tuck his head under his chin.

Michelle held onto my arms and looked into my eyes. “I saw him visit the barn sometimes. Your boy. I thought he was just… tagging along with Jake. He’s grown, you know. Hair down to his shoulders, with that lovely curl at the end like yours. His dæmon settled as a timber rattlesnake, did you know? We have one at the Gardens. Totally invisible in the leaf litter until the moment they strike…”

She didn’t know him well, only what she’d seen in glimpses from his visits to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. But she’d seen him much more recently than I had, and she told me everything she could remember. I drank in every detail, trying to imagine the portrait she painted with her words. A young man on a new adult-sized racing bike, his hair streaming behind him, Diamanta coiled around the crossbar with the end of her tail whipping free.

“They must be friends,” I whispered. “Our children. More than friends. Comrades-in-arms. They must save each other’s lives every day.”

“They’d better,” Michelle said fiercely. “They don’t have us. They need each other.”

“They have their fathers, don’t they? The Empire is still hunting for them. They must be with our kids.”

“They do,” Michelle said. “But – well. I don’t know your husband. But I don’t think either of them are – they’re not like us.”

I shook my head. How could they be? They haven’t seen what we’ve seen.

The cage door rattled open. “All of you out,” the guards said.

Caio gave his little spider dæmon a kiss and tucked her away in the lanyard around his neck. I gave Michelle one last hug before she bent to pick up Dashiell. We stood and came out, dragged along the pier. Michelle was ahead of me. I stopped looking at her; she would be gone any minute, replaced at least in part by Sub-Visser 198. I tucked my arm around Mercurio’s neck.

_Hail Mary, full of grace. I certainly hope the Lord is with you, because He’s somewhere very far from here._

Michelle was forced to her knees by the guard, her head shoved down.

_Damned are we among women, and damned are the fruits of our wombs, Cassie and Marco._

She walked calmly away. My turn now. My knees complained as they struck the metal of the pier. The sludge was warm and slick on the side of my face. I felt the questing tip of Aftran’s slug body in my ear canal.

_Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. I don’t think you’ll have to wait long._

Aftran must have known, in the moment of connection with my brain, that I was also praying for her when I said, _Amen._


End file.
